Food & Drink
There is such a thing as a free lunch if you make a delicious soup from wild nettles, writes Dale Mailley of The Gardener’s Cottage
Recipes from Dale Mailley of Gardener’s Cottage, plus Rose Murray Brown on wines from Croatia
Using cheaper cuts of meat and foraging for flavours in the hedgerows can make for an extra special meal. The quality of the produce we use at The Gardener’s Cottage is core to our ethos, along with traceability, so we source directly from farmers and buy all our meat, vegetables and fish directly and always like to butcher in house. The skill of whole animal butchery in commercial kitchens is slowly vanishing as it’s much easier to purchase meat in a vacuum bag. But I believe this skill is an important part of learning your trade.
I worked for Neil Forbes when I was a young chef and he inspired me to think about where our food comes from and to cook what’s in season. And he taught me the skill of seam butchery. He is still teaching this skill at his great restaurant Cafe St Honoré all these years later. We receive three deliveries of meat from local farms and gamekeepers every week to our butchery kitchen in Leith. Butchering in house gives us a deep understanding of the animal, its meat and how best to use it on our menus. n
Nettle soup, Dunbar winkles and smoked bacon
Wild nettles can make for a lovely healthy soup, packed with goodness and fun to pick with the family. There is such a thing as a free lunch! Just remember to wear gloves when you pick them and before you cook them. You can find wild nettles everywhere, maybe even in your garden. I use chicken stock for my nettle soup and garnish it with smoked bacon, fried with winkles. I love the flavour combination of winkles cooked in bacon fat – it adds a lovely smoky, decadent flavour to this soup.
Makes four generous portions
1 litre chicken stock 2 peeled potatoes, cut into small pieces ½ onion, diced 3 tbsp rapeseed oil 700g washed wild nettles 2 rashers smoked bacon 150g winkles salt and pepper
1 Sauté the diced onion in the rapeseed oil without colouring it. Add the chicken stock and potatoes and cook until the potatoes are tender. Remove from the heat and set aside.
2 Bring a large pot of salty water to the boil and blanch the nettles in small batches. Refresh in iced water to retain the colour.
3 Remove the nettles from the iced water and add to the chicken stock and potatoes and blend. Pass through a sieve to remove any unwanted fibres.
4 Rinse the winkles under cold water then add to a small pot, cover with water and bring to the boil. Boil for a few minutes then remove and refresh in iced water.
5 Use a cocktail stick to remove the cooked winkles from their shells, discarding the small black cap.
6 Chop the bacon rashers into chunks and fry in a pan. Add the winkles to the bacon and cook for a few minutes. Heat the soup gently and garnish with a spoonful of the bacon and winkles.
Mutton belly and oatmeal fritters with laverbread
Mutton can be used for more than curry, something we have championed for the past six years at The Gardener’s Cottage. Using the cheaper cuts like belly requires some skill and time but the pay off is worth it. Laver is a wild seaweed that can be found along the coast of Scotland and boiled down to make a silky black purée. You can buy fresh seaweed online if you don’t like the idea of harvesting it yourself. As always with wild food, do your research.
Serves six as little bite pre-dinner
600g mutton or lamb belly 200g salt 150g oatmeal 2 eggs a splash of milk 130g plain flour 500g duck fat 500ml rapeseed oil 300g laver seaweed salt and pepper to taste
1 Begin by making the laverbread. Wash the seaweed in fresh, cold water, then cover with water and simmer over a low heat for 6 hours or until the laver becomes a dark pulp. Drain and season with salt and pepper.
2 Salt the mutton belly for 4 hours by packing it in salt in a container and refrigerating. Remove from the fridge and rinse with cold water to remove any excess salt and pat dry.
3 Place the mutton belly in a deep casserole dish and submerge in duck fat. Cover with foil and cook at 120C/ Gas Mark ½ for 4 hours.
4 Remove the belly from the duck fat once cooled and cut into nuggets about the size of your thumb.
5 Whisk 2 eggs plus a splash of milk in a bowl and fill a further 2 bowls with the oatmeal and the flour. Coat the mutton first in the flour, then the egg, then finally in the oatmeal.
6 Bring the oil up to about 180C and fry the fitters for 1 to 2 minutes until golden brown, serve hot with the laverbread dip.
Rye and chocolate teacakes
These teacakes are served at our bakery in Leith, Quay Commons, and we also serve them as a petit four at dinner in The Gardener’s Cottage. I love the flavour of rye shortbread, and combined with soft, silky-sweet Italian meringue, it’s delicious. We use Chocolate Tree chocolate to enrobe the teacake to add a bitter, crunchy shell. This for me is the ultimate teacake and makes for a
great afternoon treat or a decadent dessert.
Makes six teacakes
300g dark chocolate 4 egg whites 300g caster sugar 250g dark rye flour 250g unsalted butter, softened 1 Heat the oven to 160C/gas Mark 3. 2 Cream the butter and 100g of caster sugar in a bowl and add the flour slowly. When combined refrigerate for 10 minutes.
3 Remove the shortbread mixture from the fridge and roll out to a 1 inch thickness. Cut with a 60mm pastry ring and place on a lined baking tray. Bake for 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool.
4 Whip the egg whites to soft peaks in a food processor.
5 Place the remaining sugar in a pan with a few tablespoons of water and bring to the boil. Don’t be tempted to stir or the sugar will crystallise. Bring the sugar to 120C and slowly add it to the egg whites, whisking on a slow speed. Continue whisking until cooled.
6 Fill a piping bag with the meringue mix and pipe it in a dome shape on the shortbread bases.
7 To temper the chocolate, place it in a bowl over gently simmering water until you achieve a temperature of 42C. Then transfer to a clean bowl and allow it to cool to 28C before placing the bowl over a pan of gently simmering water again and bringing it back up to 32C. The chocolate is ready to use now and you can enrobe your teacakes.
8 Pour the tempered chocolate over the teacakes to completely cover them. Leave to cool in the fridge until the chocolate has hardened.